In this episode, Marc answers questions with his trusty sidekick, Elizabeth Rabaey. You can learn about her career pivots in Episode 020. Listen in to this episode for insight on doing detective work about why you weren’t hired, skipping the recruiter process, and how much notice is required when you leave a job. Key Takeaways: [:45] Marc welcomes you to the episode and gives an overview of the podcast series. This month the series will be out of the normal order. Next week Marc will interview Camille Knight, a logical creative who married her love for data and creativity. Marc has a couple of experts lined up to be interviewed, but scheduling has been challenging. [1:37] The expert interview is usually the first in the monthly series. The third in the series is a topic of Marc’s choosing, and the fourth episode is the ‘mailbag’ episode with questions from listeners. [1:51] This is the mailbag Q&A episode with Elizabeth Rabaey. [2:07] Elizabeth introduces herself and her job. [3:20] Q1: I have been passed over for a position. I just received an email. How do I find out why I was passed over for the position? [3:36] A1: Marc recently updated a blog post, “You Didn’t Get the Job. Now What?” The key piece here is you need to have people on the inside. As you start the job search, find a referral inside the company. Marc tells about a friend’s asking Marc for help with HR at his employer. Marc found out what skills his friend was missing and told his friend. [5:55] At an interview, get business cards from interviewers. After the interview, you immediately thank everyone, then send LinkedIn connections requests, and even send the recruiter a $5.00 Starbucks gift card if they were nice. Get on the good side of the recruiter. Next, talk to your contact and see if they can play detective with HR. [7:06] The last step is to wait a month or so, look on LinkedIn, and see who got the job. It’s unlikely to get a job in competition with an inside person. Send that person a connection request. Reach out to them and see if they’d be willing to talk. Other similar positions may come up. Just because you didn’t get the job doesn’t mean it’s all over. [8:31] If the person who got the job is 25 years younger than you are, that may tell you what they want in a candidate. Ageism is alive and well. Look for companies that are very age-friendly. Some companies are well known for being age-friendly. Be a detective before the interview. [9:45] Q2: I have been applying for positions and rarely do I get a callback. If I do, I meet with a low-level recruiter who does not have the experience to evaluate me for this position. How do I bypass the recruiter to talk to the hiring manager? [10:09] A2: Marc says listen to Episode 58 with Gary O’Neal. Marc will do a blog post soon on the four things you don’t know about the hiring process at your target companies. You don’t know when a position will open up. You don’t know what keywords, if any, are plugged into their job post. You don’t know who will be filtering the resumes, and you don’t know if the recruiter knows anything about the position. [11:26] Gary O’Neal talks about bypassing the whole recruitment system by figuring out who the hiring managers are. You can do that on LinkedIn. Systematically start reaching out to people. Applying for jobs online does work some of the time. Those are the exceptions. Recruiters ask you a stock set of questions. [12:28] In Episode 58, Gary talks about reaching out to three kinds of people at the company. A hiring manager, someone who would be your peer, and a recruiter. Gary talks about reaching out to 100 companies with a three-email sequence. By going around the standard hiring process, you can make real connections. [13:03] In an upcoming month, Marc will have Career Sherpa Hannah Morgan as a guest. She has been consulting on jobs for 12 years. Job searching has changed greatly in 10 years. If you follow the recruiters’ process, you’ll get stuck in it. [13:36] Gary al